UCL US Studies Event: Black History Month Screening and Discussion – Tangerine

Hear the story of the Sex Pistols tour of America. The Sex Pistols notorious 1978 tour of the southern US was one of the more surreal moments in music history. Banned from the radio and venues at home, the rapidly disintegrating band played places like Memphis, Baton Rouge, San Antonio and Dallas, in a move calculated by manager Malcolm McLaren to generate maximum culture clash. Bob Gruen was one of the acclaimed photographers on the tour and he is joined by Southern historian and US music expert Brian Ward.

Free Entry, Conference Centre Chaucer Room, 12.30-2.00pm on stated dates The Eccles Centre Summer Scholars series runs through July and August.  The series highlights the work of the Eccles Visiting Fellows and Postgraduate Researchers have done during their residency in the British Library, bringing the latest research related to the North Americas collections to a public audience.   Representation and Participation in Progressive Era World's Fairs Emily Trafford explores the activities of Chinese and Chinese-American people at world’s fairs, examining the ways in which world’s fairs became key sites of battle over the representation of the Chinese in America.   “The Low Growl of the Lion:" Black Activists in Britain 1830-1895  Hannah-Rose Murray discusses the impact of Frederick Douglass and other black activists on British society and her creation of the world's first digitised map of their speaking locations in Britain.

Saturday 16 July, 10:00am - 5:00pm Cecil Sharp House, London Pastoralism and modernity in the southern mountains: a centenary symposium on Cecil Sharp's 1916 Appalachian journey. 2016 marks the centenary of song collector and folklorist Cecil Sharp's Appalachian fieldtrip, an event that shaped both North American and European conceptions of the history and culture of the southern mountains of America. To celebrate, Cecil Sharp House is hosting a weekend of Appalachian music and a conference exploring the culture of the region. Friday 15th July, 7:30pm Sharp's Appalachian Harvest - Brian Peters Brian Peters opens the weekender with his show ‘Sharp's Appalachian Harvest’. It tells the epic story of the trips made by Cecil Sharp and Maud Karpeles into the heart of the Appalachian Mountains, portrayed in music, narrative and image by leading ballad singer, musician and researcher Brian Peters. Brian Peters sings some of the best of the ballads, reads fascinating excerpts […]

Free Entry, Conference Centre Chaucer Room, 12.30-2.00pm on stated dates The Eccles Centre Summer Scholars series runs through July and August.  The series highlights the work of the Eccles Visiting Fellows and Postgraduate Researchers have done during their residency in the British Library, bringing the latest research related to the North Americas collections to a public audience. Chris Birkett looks at the 1998 Lewinsky scandal that plunged America into cultural turmoil, and explores how the Home Run Race of the same year deployed baseball mythology to reaffirm beliefs in idealised American values of morality, masculinity and confession during a time of political and moral crisis.

Free Entry, Conference Centre Chaucer Room, 12.30-2.00pm on stated dates The Eccles Centre Summer Scholars series runs through July and August.  The series highlights the work of the Eccles Visiting Fellows and Postgraduate Researchers have done during their residency in the British Library, bringing the latest research related to the North Americas collections to a public audience. Kevan Manwaring explores the iconic ‘log-cabin’, synonymous with the pioneering spirit of North America. Tracing influences back to Scots-Irish and Scandinavian settlers, this illustrated talk will show log-cabins in a new light.

SUMMER SCHOLARS British Library, Free Entry, 12.30-2.00pm on stated dates The Eccles Centre Summer Scholars series runs through July and August.  The series highlights the work of the Eccles Visiting Fellows and Postgraduate Researchers who have done during their residency in the British Library, bringing the latest research related to the North Americas collections to a public audience.  The full schedule can be seen athttp://www.bl.uk/eccles/events.html#summerscholars   The Poetics of Reticence: Emily Dickinson and Her Contemporaries Eve Grubin discusses Emily Dickinson’s poems and their characteristic style against the backdrop of poetry written by other American women during Dickinson’s time. The Modern Consuming Housewife From feminine vice to essential feminine interest, Rachael Alexander explores changing attitudes to makeup and fashion as seen in, and encouraged by, the Ladies' Home Journal and Canadian Home Journal of the 1920s.